Friends

Up till recently, I've always had close friends, but since the closest went abroad in 2002 I realised the others were too busy to hardly ever see, as they'd excluded me after marriage and children, where the other had included me as a family member. So, after a lifetime of having friends around me, and never having planned how to get one in my life, I'm now faced with the position of having to go out and make new ones somehow.
Up till now, friends just came into my life, a certain formula was required where someone just felt right, and then they stayed from a few years to indefinitely. Since I was five there have always been one or more special friends who became like brothers (and one wife) and as two, like me, were only children, the requirement for a brother was greater as we only had the regular company of our parents and their generation. 'People' are not the same, having ordinary people around me is sometimes just a nuisance, as if they're not on my level but want to hang around they just get on my nerves. I'm not desperate for company, but interesting conversation and laughs, which sadly few can provide. So having just sat back and attracted friends like cats pick up burrs on their fur on the garden, I'm pondering on what to now do to go and find one actively.

On the supply side, I both know suitable women and suitable friends exist in large numbers. I've met and been rejected by tens of suitable women, and come across hundreds of potential close friends, but they nowadays nearly all live abroad. Of course if I was married it would cover both bases as I would never marry a woman who wasn't a best friend as well. Just to cheer myself up, I'll now tell the story of the girl who was like my wife, including the bossy aspect.

When I was five I moved from Kingsbury, where I live now, to Hampstead Garden Suburb, a foreign but very affluent area about four miles to the east of me. Though I loved my old area as we were in and out of the neighbours, and knew the names of all the shopkeepers, the place was far too small and we had to move. Very soon after arriving in the new place, the girl two doors away introduced herself, and we were soon stuck together as if we'd known each other from birth. She was a year older than me, and we often slept over, and believe me, anything went, though we didn't have a map and were only exploring out of curiosity, it was a journey of discovery that only allowed me to want more. A few years later she moved away and I hardly saw her after that except for the odd visit. She always pushed me around but I didn't really care unless it was with her friends and they joined in. But when it was just the two of us around locally we had a whale of a time. In fact, long before proper girlfriends, I was already imprinted with how it felt to be with a female partner where everything was comfortable and felt right.
She grew up, got boyfriends, qualified as a lawyer, got married, and ignored my email on Friends Reunited. Fucking typical, everyone else moves on except Muggins here. Mind you, don't people join it because they want to drag up the past?

Well, life for me started good, built up to a peak around 1972-5, and then slowly went downhill. I'm not asking for sympathy, just looking back from 2005, and then ahead from 1967, and that's what I see.